Bad-karma caper

The resident lama at Chagdud Gonpa-Padma Ling Buddhist center says a thief has likely racked up some bad karma.

On Wednesday, Lama Inge Sandvoss noticed someone had stolen the protective copper and gold-leafed canopy from the Padma Ling’s backyard stupa on the South Hill, a monument containing Buddhist relics that serves as a place of veneration and meditation. “There are many, many all over the world,” Sandvoss said of stupas. “They’re symbolic for enlightenment.”

She told an old story of a pig in Nepal that inadvertently splashed some mud on a massive stupa in Nepal, creating mortar that actually strengthened it. Even though it was accidental, the pig gained such good karma he was reborn in the god realm. So one can imagine the repercussions of intentionally harming a stupa, she said, and the strong positive karma that could come to someone who returns the canopy.

“There is incredible merit that is generated by building a stupa or maintaining it,” Sandvoss said. “If the people knew it was really bad karma, maybe they would return it.”

Sandvoss said the residents at Padma Ling, a Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhist center, did not notify authorities.

“We don’t want to pursue this with the police,” she said. “There are way too many people in jail. We just want it back.”

She doesn’t know when, exactly, it was stolen.

“We didn’t notice it at first, because it’s just so unreal someone would do that,” she said. “It’s so preposterous that you don’t think anybody would do this. We just don’t expect it.”

The canopy was custom-made and donated by Steve Mullin, of Sandpoint, about seven years ago. He agreed to make a new one but won’t be able to start until summer. In the meantime, Sandvoss will place a lampshade she painted gold on the 15-foot-tall stupa in place of the actual canopy.

“It’s a little too large,” she said. “But until we get the new canopy, it will serve the purpose.”

Sandvoss has contacted a local recycling center, which put the word out to other centers to keep an eye out for the missing canopy.

The piece probably didn’t garner much gain for the thief, Mullin said. While it took many hours to make, there isn’t much in the way of material worth.

“The monetary value is probably very little,” he said. “There’s probably less than 20 bucks of material in there. Someone grabbed it thinking it had more value than it does, I guess. The copper itself is just a few pounds.”

But still, Sandvoss is hopeful the thief will do the right thing, at least for their own karmic good.

“We wouldn’t ask any questions,” she said. “We just would praise them.”

There are eight types of stupas, Sandvoss said. The one in the yard of Padma Ling is a Stupa of Reconciliation.